["Look how the market has responded to this last CC - Destiny is no secret, Steve was going around and speaking at conferences for years, he frequently claimed "whales" were kicking the tires. No one believes him any more. Alternative facts, my ass."]
I don't think he's doing that anymore. I can't confirm whales were kicking the tires, but potentially it's very interesting tech, so it wouldn't surprise me either.
One can argue about what happened. I think it's mostly a complex tech working fine in the lab running into some sharp objects in the real world.
You have to understand that for it to work on the global scale they were aiming at, they have to factor in a whole lot of different user scenarios (different devices, operating systems, hardware, ISP handling etc.etc.).
They tried to fix it, given the complexity of the problem and the size of their outfit, that cost time. Ultimately they gave up and are now trying something else.
I don't think there is much more to it. Yes, Steve has been enthusiastic, perhaps a little too much at times, but under controlled circumstances it was working well and it's his baby after all. You should also take into consideration what he hasn't done. He hasn't diluted (bar one small financing), management on the whole have been net buyers of shares, they've been pretty frugal, they've reduced cost by a lot this year. They've built a hosting platform.
One could argue that perhaps trying to cram video streams through HTML5 and Javascript shouldn't be done at all, perhaps Keubiko has that opinion, I don't know. I think the demo's I've seen are still good enough for them to having tried. Whether it will succeed, I don't know, jury still out, but the idea is interesting enough to pursue, IMHO.